


MIRROR, MIRROR

by youtiao



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Bottom Wu Yi Fan | Kris, M/M, Magic Mirrors, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 11:14:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25469836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youtiao/pseuds/youtiao
Summary: Yifan visits personal improvement blogs, ends up at a magic shop 80km away from home, purchases a cursed mirror—all to prove he still wants to live.It works, in a roundabout way.
Relationships: Kim Jongdae | Chen/Kim Jongin | Kai/Wu Yi Fan | Kris
Comments: 12
Kudos: 34
Collections: November Rain Fest Round 2





	MIRROR, MIRROR

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt NR2047
> 
> mild cw for depression

_Go for a drive_ , the blog said. 

It’s a “self-help blog”, supposedly. It was in the recommended section beneath the search bar, the one that nobody looks at, and he’d clicked it by accident when trying to open his music app. 

Do **YOU** suffer from **FRIENDLESSNESS**? Do **YOU** want to **DEFEAT** your **SOCIAL ANXIETY**? is the first thing he sees. 

_Huh_ , Yifan thinks. 

The post is written like what he imagines a military officer sounds like. Section 1, _CONQUER YOUR FEAR OF THE OUTSIDE_. It’s loud. It’s aggressive. It’s just capital letters on a screen—he winces anyway. Section 1, point 3; _GO FOR A DRIVE_. Underneath is a photo of a forest road. Autumn. The leaves are sunny yellow. 

Do **YOU** suffer from **FRIENDLESSNESS**? 

_Do I?_ he muses with a huff of laughter, bringing a bite of beef fried noodle to his mouth. It slips from between his chopsticks. “Fuck,” he says to an empty apartment, and it echoes, like a final slap in the face.

::

Wu Yifan is not lonely. He’s twenty-six. 8 months ago, his best friend moved out of their shared apartment of five years, and a partnerless, workaholic, twenty-five-year-old Wu Yifan looked around the 5-bedroom condo that that had, once upon a time, been shared by four university students, and put it up for sale. 

He kinda regrets it now. At least the condo was familiar. 

But at the time it had felt so big and so empty and he had felt so alone and he had spectacular Wi-Fi—and for once, no Lu Han to tell him he’s being stupid. 

And now he’s living in a box. He hasn’t unpacked his boxes from the move _eight months ago_ and the new apartment still feels big and empty and he still feels alone. 

::

This is all Lu Han’s fault. 

::

He puts his takeout back into the fridge—twice-reheated, thrice-gone-cold. He’s going to _go for a drive_. Then he spends four minutes wandering around his apartment looking for his keys before remembering they’re in the pocket of his blazer, which he hasn’t taken off since arriving home two hours ago, and only then does he let himself wonder what the fuck a drive is going to do. What it’s going to attempt to do. 

_Go for a drive_ , the blog said. _You’ll have fun_ , it said. 

So, he drives. In spite of his common sense, he drives. There’s no forest within 100km of this place. It’s summer, and it’s stifling hot. 

It’s no dream or blog post photo, but he can roll the window down and let the highway wind deafen him. 

He drives into a little town with cobbled streets and tall brick buildings and farmer’s markets on Sundays, probably—it’s Friday, so he can’t know for sure, but it’s the sort of town where he expects there to be farmer’s markets on Sundays. He’d feel cheated, probably, if there wasn’t a farmer’s market on Sunday. 

There is a MAIN STREET sign suspended over this little cobblestone town’s Main Street, which is a two lane road with a speed limit of 20km/h. It’s crowded and small and after five minutes of inching down the road, he starts to understand why small town people own, at most, a bicycle. 

Section 1, point 5 is _Walk places_ ; followed by section 1 point 6, _Talk to people_. He parks his car into a side street and sits in it for a long moment. Psyches himself up.

When he finally cracks open the door, the air outside is thick and hot and slams into him like a wall. His head spins. 

He entertains the idea of retracting his leg and cranking up the air-con and driving home. It’s Friday. He shouldn’t be in an alley in fuck-knows-where, sweating bullets. But the blog, the blog has him in its grip; and it demands him, it commands him to _walk places_. 

So he walks. 

::

The magic shop is called SUHO’S MAGIC SHOP. 

Yifan walks past it, actually. It’s red-brick like all the other buildings in this little town. It has the same angled windows. The same bronze serif street number plaques. He’s power-walking toward the grocer’s with the green-and-white striped awning, and he’s going to spend so much money on fruit because he’s a responsible adult who hasn’t had fruit in one-and-a-half weeks. 

But then he stops. He walks back. 

He doesn’t know why he turns around, but he doesn’t know why he does anything, nowadays. He walks back to SUHO’S MAGIC SHOP in a trance. There are wind chimes in the doorway, seemingly handmade, the metal pieces roughly-cut and unpolished, cradling a blue marble each. He stares at the wind chimes for a long, long time. 

“Scuse me, sir,” a little girl chirps as she jogs past him, a red balloon in hand. 

God. _Get a grip_ , he tells himself, scrubbing a hand over his face. He turns away. 

...

...

..........

He turns around. 

The tinkling of the wind chimes echo in his head as he pushes open the door. Like laughter. 

SUHO’S MAGIC SHOP is cold. 

It is chillingly cold where the street is oppressively hot. It is dim where the sun is blazing in sun-set. It feels like stepping into an alternate dimension. 

SUHO’S MAGIC SHOP is small and closed and cluttered, yet, somehow, Yifan feels so, so small, standing there in the doorway. He’s not sure where to look first. 

The shelf of snow-globe/crystal-ball-adjacent objects? The eerily glowing plants hanging from the ceiling? The terrariums with little fairy figurines? The mason jars, so full of... _stuff_? 

Stuff. There’s so much of it. And by God, it can’t be real, but it looks so _real_.

The three-legged bookshelf stuffed full with thick books and the sparkling writing on their spines. A star-patterned wizard hat. Old fashioned playing cards. A music player. Trays of tealights. There’s _something_ by the jewelry display flicks in and out of sight but he can never get a good enough look at it, for it disappears whenever he turns toward it. 

He can’t be sure. He can’t be sure of anything in this shop. Everything has such a distinct foggy quality. 

Then he sees the mirror. 

It feels even less real than the other ??real?? things in the shop, which is an achievement for a ??plain?? mirror. It’s very mirror-y. Shiny. The frame is carved, polished black wood—shiny, too; he can see his reflection in it almost as well as the glass. 

It’s a narrow oval shape, and tucked into the dark corner made by the three-legged bookshelf and the mannequin meticulously dressed up as a witch. There’s a piece of caution tape draped over it. He reaches out to touch it and—

“Caught your eye?” 

Yifan jumps fourteen feet into the air. 

A man lounges in a plastic garden chair behind the glass counter. Yifan stares. He has white hair and deer horns branching out of his head. 

“Don’t be so skittish,” the man says, standing up. He makes his way over to Yifan. 

He has freckles and is half a head shorter than Yifan. He wears a faded graphic tee tucked into high waisted pants and battered sneakers—if not for the antlers, he would look normal. 

Almost. His hair is shockingly blindingly white. 

There’s an etherealness to him, but it might be the store fucking with him. It probably is the store fucking with him. Up close, the antlers look even more real. And Yifan has never seen real deer antlers and probably shouldn’t be making judgements, but _god_. What the fuck. 

Yifan bites back an expletive and goes back to staring at the mirror. The freckled deer man peers at him. He can feel it. His hair stands on end. “You’re not from here,” Deer-man says, pursing his lips. There’s glitter on his cheekbones. 

Yifan barks out a laugh. “How could you tell?” he asks dryly. 

“Not like that,” Deer-man responds, tucking his thumbs into his pockets. He turns to Yifan. His eyes are blue. He seems to be looking straight through Yifan, straight into Yifan, pulling him apart with his Glacier Freeze Gatorade gaze. 

And Yifan is no coward—he stares back, even though he feels like Deer-man is reading his thoughts, his history, rifling through a file cabinet of his deepest secrets. 

A tense moment, two, three. 

Deer-man looks away first. He turns back to the mirror, running a hand over the carved frame. He turns back to Yifan. His eyes are brown now. That’s freaky. “Well, are you interested?” he asks with a placid smile, as if he hadn’t just given Yifan nightmare fuel for at least 8 days. 

“What?” 

“The mirror,” Deer-man says, rolling his eyes. 

“Oh.” Yifan turns to the mirror. “Ah.” It pulls at him, and he sways toward it without thinking much of it. “Um, how much?” 

Deer-man squints at him. He squints at him for a long time—contemplating how high he should upcharge a city boy like Yifan, probably. Ah, well. If it’s atrocious, he doesn’t _need_ a mirror. 

He leans back, smiling that smile of his, “Fifty dollars and it’s yours.” 

Yifan gapes. “You sure?” A pause. “Why?” 

Deer-man’s smile turns wry. “Seems like something you need,” is all he says. 

::

Five minutes later, Yifan is down $50—it was a special bill that was supposed to go into his rare currency collection but, alas, the shop doesn’t take cards. 

He’d gotten used to the dim cold inside the magic shop so stepping outside makes him squint, bells jangling behind him as the door swings shut. He gasped out a breath, feeling so, so out of his element. 

The sun’s still slowly going down, the wind’s picked up, chasing away the terrible heat. It would be nice to go on a walk like this, he thinks, with the purple-orange clouds and empty streets. 

So he does. He spends ten minutes trying to fit the mirror into his car, finding out the back seats can be pushed down in the process. Damn. He’s owned this car for six years. 

He stands there and breathes for a while. Small town air, something like that. It’s sweet. 

He walks. 

He goes the opposite way of SUHO’S MAGIC SHOP because. Well. Why not. He tucks his hands into his jacket pockets and walks. The cobble roads and narrow brick buildings stretch on for a long time, but they eventually open, and to a park of all things. Also with cobbled pathways. Flowering trees in even intervals along the path. An ice cream truck. 

He walks a circle around the tiny town that is not so tiny when he’s on foot. He’s like a speck in the infinitely large expanse of the universe. He has to crane his neck back to see the tops of the narrow brick buildings of this town. It’s humbling. It’s comforting. He feels more at home staring up at the roofs of these old old buildings than he does at his dark, empty apartment. 

Yifan actually only notices he’d walked in a circle when he comes up on the grocery store with the green-and-white awning. He passes it, slows to greet the lady sweeping the front, and ends up buying a basket of peaches. “They’re in season!” she said with a smile. “Very sweet.” 

The sky is indigo now, streaked with pink and navy clouds. The cold is beginning to creep in. He shivers, picking up the pace. 

Then, he’s passing by a store. He almost goes right past it, but the rusted wind-chimes that hang before the door let out a terrible rattle that makes him stop, and look. 

Angled windows, blacked out. 305 on the bronze serif street number plaque. Old boards nailed over the door. A sign that probably once said CLOSED, but now has faded beyond legibility. Small pieces of garbage clutter the corners of the entryway. 

SUHO’S MAGIC SHOP, says the sign above. 

He stares. He closes his eyes and opens it again. He walks a block down and turns back, and it’s still like that. SUHO’S MAGIC SHOP.

“Ma’am,” he stops a passing elderly woman, “how long has this shop been like this?” 

The woman squints. “Oh, dear. It closed when I was young... Sixty years, give or take?” 

“It hasn’t been sold?” 

“Well, nobody wants it. They say it’s haunted,” the woman says. There’s a wistful expression on her face. “Suho was... an _eccentric_ young man. If anyone would become a ghost, it would be him... Some said he was just like that. Some said he was insane. Some said he was one of the fae people.” 

A laugh. A shake of the head. 

“Perhaps he was. Certainly looked the part. Nobody wears deer antlers if they’re not a bit weird.”

::

Yifan returns to his car. Yifan gets inside, stares at the road in front of him. He sits. He buries his face in his hands. 

What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck. 

Maybe he’s hallucinating. The stress is getting to him. The loneliness. He’s descending into madness. 

But the mirror. The mirror is real. How can the mirror be real? It doesn’t make sense. How can he recall the shop so clearly? It doesn’t make sense. He checks his wallet, and his special $50 bill is gone. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. 

It doesn’t make sense. 

Yifan starts his car. “Siri,” he croaks, “directions home.” 

::

Yifan wakes up with a pounding headache and a sore neck. He’d fallen asleep halfway through his bottle of on-sale espresso vodka, squeezed into his plastic folding chair at his plastic folding table. They were supposed to be temporary, but he’d never gotten around to ordering a proper table and chair. 

So here they are, eight months later. 

He stares at the alcohol dejectedly. He’d tried to sleep. He really did. But every time he closed his eyes, he saw Deer-man/Suho(?)’s piercing blue ones, whoever that bastard was, and he’d jolt awake. 

He’s ready to walk the 10 metres to his bedroom and go back to sleep when he hears the doorbell buzz. 

It’s Lu Han. He’s standing there, hair dyed ash-grey and painstakingly-made ‘effortless’ waves, tapping at his phone. There’s a frown on his pretty face, and it deepens when Yifan opens the door. 

“What are you doing here?” Yifan asks. He steps aside to let Lu Han in anyway. 

“Good morning to you too,” Lu Han snarks, toeing off the shoes. “I can’t pay a friend a visit now?” He kicks his shoes into line. “Also, I texted an hour ago.” 

Yifan picks up his phone. It’s dead. “It’s dead,” he says. 

Lu Han peers at him. “You look like shit.” 

“I’m fine,” he says. “I just woke up.” 

Lu Han snorts. “You just woke up, huh?” 

It’s sort of awful. Lu Han is awful. He sees through all Yifan’s bullshit. He’s barely turned the lock on the door before he remembers, _Ah, the vodka_. And by then, of course, Lu Han has seen all his unpacked boxes, has seen the half-empty bottle. He peels the green sale sticker off. 

Lu Han stares at the sticker for a long time. 

“Yifan,” he says in _that_ voice. 

It’s the voice. It’s the ‘ _You said you would stop drinking this much_ ’ voice. It’s the ‘ _You said you would finish unpacking_ ’ voice. It’s the small, hurt, ‘ _You promised me_ ’ voice. It’s gotten tired and Yifan has gotten tired of hearing it. 

So he snaps. “I know,” he snaps. He regrets it instantly, because Lu Han will get angry—but Lu Han just looks sad. He regrets it even more. He stalks into the bedroom and plugs his phone in, slow-cooking in his regret. 

When he returns from hiding contemplating in his bedroom, Lu Han is smiling again and the bottle is gone. Perhaps it’s for the better. “This is new,” Lu Han says. He’s standing beside the mirror, propped up beside the door, still wrapped in paper. 

“Ah,” Yifan mutters, remembering electric blue eyes. 

He decides, in that moment, to just accept it. Shit happens. And what did he expect from a _magic shop_ —hell, he’d probably be offended Suho didn’t try to curse him. He clears his throat. “It’s a mirror.” 

Lu Han raises an eyebrow. 

“I was too tired to take the paper off,” he says, as pathetic as it is. 

They tear the paper off. He has justifications on his tongue, in case Lu Han asks— _it was $50_ — _doesn’t it look nice?_ He knows Lu Han can appreciate a good carved mirror— _home decor, you know???_ — _I need a mirror_ —etc, etc, etc. 

But they die there. 

In the middle of the mirror, in bloody letters, reads 

_HI_

::

“YIFAN WHAT THE _FUCK!_ ” 

“I DON’T KNOW!” 

“THIS ISN’T A PRANK???” 

“I DON’T KNOW WHERE IT CAME FROM!” 

“ _WHAT DO YOU MEAN_ YOU DON’T _KNOW_ WHERE IT CAME FROM? YOU _BOUGHT_ IT!” 

“IT WASN’T LIKE THAT WHEN I GOT IT, I SWEAR!” 

::

There’s a crack in the mirror and a smudge of red when they look again. “Sorry,” Lu Han says. “I punched it on instinct.” The smudge persists, even after Yifan sprays it down with rubbing alcohol and scrubs at it until the cloth makes squeaky sounds against the glass. 

“This shit is cursed,” Lu Han says, icing his knuckles. “Where’d you say you got it from?” 

Yifan is silent. Blue eyes. Maybe he spoke too early. Everything has a price, and this more-than-likely-cursed mirror is worth more than the fifty bucks he’d paid. He continues scrubbing at the smudge, and in his adrenaline-addled brain, he thinks the smudge is starting to go away. 

“Yifan?” 

“Okay, listen...” 

::

Lu Han is silent for a long time after he finishes his story. 

Yifan’s about to say _just kidding, haha, isn’t that fucked up?_ when Lu Han stands up. 

He picks up the mirror and puts it outside the apartment. “Let’s just leave it here,” he says. One of Yifan’s bedsheets gets thrown over it, for good measure. He dusts his hands off, the picture of nonchalance, but they’re shaking. He notices them the same time Yifan does, and puts them on his hips.

“Now, go shower. I’m gonna take you out to brunch.” 

::

Yifan returns from brunch feeling like a thrice-wrung dishtowel. 

Lu Han is nice and well off and he frequents establishments for nice and well off people. Like hip new diners. Like foamy coffee and food that looks better than it tastes. Well, to be fair, Yifan is nice and well off too—he just doesn’t understand the things that nice-and-well-off-people enjoy, like brunch and 5cm-thick waffles and open-air dining where vines grow from the slatted ceiling. 

He comes to a stop outside his apartment. He comes to a stop in front of the sheet-covered mirror. _Leave it outside_ , Lu Han said. _Better not keep weird shit that you got from time traveling to 1960 in your house, you know?_

Yifan knows. 

::

Yifan takes the mirror inside. 

::

“Okay,” he says to himself. “Okay.” 

He’s holding the corner of the sheet. He’d half-shoved, half-carried the mirror into his bedroom, despite the alarm bells blaring and Lu Han’s words echoing in his head. 

_Why would you put it in your **bedroom**!? Are you insane?!_ Lu Han would say. 

Maybe he is. 

_Just take it off_ , his brain screams at him. But he’s locked in place, standing in front of the covered mirror, gripping so tightly to the corner of the sheet that his knuckles have gone white. A cloud passes over the sun, and the room grows dark. 

He lets go of the sheet. Crawls into bed. 

He’ll deal with it later. 

::

Later turns out to be 8 hours later. He wakes up to navy blue and feels like the day has been snatched out from beneath him. He feels around for his phone, which lights up too fucking bright, searing his eyes when he jams his thumb into the power button. 

It’s 9PM. He sits in his bed and gathers his wins—at least it isn’t the next morning. He may have slept the day away, but at least he didn’t sleep the day _and_ night away. A win. Among so many losses.

He gets up and makes ramen and eats it right in front of the microwave, as pathetic and sad as it is. He walks around his apartment, ice clinking in the glass in his hand, just flicking lights on. They make him feel better when he returns to his bedroom and discovers the sheet that had been covering the mirror had slipped. 

Well. Fuck it. He takes the corner of the sheet and yanks it off completely. In the mirror, he looks blue. 

A handprint appears in the glass. 

Yifan doesn’t scream. 

He stands there, holding his empty ramen cup and chopsticks, staring at the handprint in the mirror that is so very conveniently placed over his face. At least it is not a _bloody_ handprint. That is definitely an improvement. 

After a moment, the handprint disappears. He exhales. 

Then, writing appears. 

It’s not in blood this time—straight and even lines, like marker. Yifan just assumes it’s a language that he won’t be able to understand, seeing how they’re starting from the right, and sits back to watch them finish. It’s only after they finish writing does Yifan squint at the writing and think, _damn, I feel like I should be able to read this_. 

A minute of staring and he realises it’s backwards. _Mirrored_. He rubs his forehead and leans closer and squints—and discovers that reading backwards is very much not his skill. 

“I’m sorry,” he says out loud. “I can’t read this.” 

For a moment, he feels like a fool for talking to his mirror. But there’s someone _writing_ in his mirror. Honestly, how much crazier is it to talk to it? 

Wobbly, the writing comes back. Left to right this time. _Damn_ , Yifan thinks, watching as words appear over his shocked face, _this person can write backwards_. 

_hi_ , it says. _sry for the scare earlier_

“Oh.” Yifan isn’t sure how to respond. “It’s ok.” 

They draw a smiley face. Yifan is even less sure how to respond. 

So he does the mature thing—he shuts off the lights and crawls into bed for the second time that day. 

::

In spite of his 8-hour nap the previous day, Yifan sleeps well—he wakes to the sun streaming through the window, headache-free (for once), and _good morning :)_ written on the mirror. 

“Good morning,” he says cautiously. He roots around the drawer for an Advil. 

_how are you?_ appears across the glass. He stands awkwardly in front of his cursed mirror, because his mother may have been absent all his childhood but she taught him that it’s rude not to face someone when talking to them. 

Even if that someone is a mirror. 

Or someone inside his mirror? 

For fuck’s sake. He’s talking to a _mirror_. 

“I’m good,” he says, while he tries, in vain, to flatten his bedhead. “Um. How are you?” 

_good :-)_ , they write. 

A long silence ensues. 

The thing is, Yifan is not good at this whole carrying on conversation thing. Making friends? Even worse. He’d been in his second year and all he had was a nice unbroken good-morning-how-are-you-I’m-good streak with his seatmates in his five classes—and that’s all he really needed. He didn’t need anyone’s number and nobody needed his, and that was fine with him. 

Then, during one 8AM rush, he let Lu Han use the power outlet he was sitting next to, and was consequently coined a deity and dragged into his friend group. 

Lu Han’s friend group were strange people. They called him ‘outlet guy’ for two weeks—every time they yelled, “hey outlet guy!” in passing, Yifan wondered if they were fucking with him. It certainly seemed very teen-movie-bully-esque. 

Until Zitao scratched his head and said, “yo, outlet guy, what’s your name? Lu never told us,” and then Lu Han made an affronted noise and said, “I don’t know his name either!” 

Two fucking weeks. 

And the thing is, they liked to talk. They were okay with Yifan just listening and contributing at most a witty remark, laughing uproariously whenever he did so. 

Five years later, he’s still bad at conversation. He’s still bad at making friends. He has a good-morning-how-are-you-I’m-good with the few coworkers that actually use the office kitchen, and he doesn’t have their phone numbers either. 

Fuck, why is he even considering friendship with his mirror/the person in his mirror? 

He really needs to pee. Without another word, he wheels around, leaving the _good :-)_ unanswered. 

::

He feels guilty. 

He returns to his bedroom with his breakfast and the folding chair underneath his arm. The _good :-)_ is gone. He stares at his reflection. Thinks, _I’ve never looked at myself this much_. He unfolds the chair, and sits down in front of the mirror, wondering if he’ll be able to make it through breakfast watching himself eat. 

_what are you eating?_

“Ah.” Yifan looks down at his sad oatmeal. “Oatmeal.” 

The someone in the mirror doesn’t write anything else. He finishes his oatmeal, folds up his chair, and trudges into the living room to work. 

::

Occasionally, Yifan will talk to the someone in his mirror. They write _good morning_ —always waking up before Yifan does, as there’s always a _good morning_ no matter how early he wakes up—6AM on a Monday, in wondrous contrast to his habit of staying in bed until past-midday. Or maybe they don’t sleep? (That makes a lot more sense.) 

It’s a little strange knowing that the someone in the mirror can see and hear him through the mirror. They don’t seem bothered with Yifan covering the mirror with a sheet when he sleeps and changes clothes. 

He’s taken to eating dinner in front of the mirror, as self-absorbed as the concept is. It’s uncomfortable for him too, okay? But he hasn’t eaten with someone in a long time, and he’s lonely. The someone in the mirror asks about his food, citing “it’s so different from the stuff they’ve seen”. 

It makes Yifan wonder _what_ they’re used to seeing, which segues into _where_ they’re from and _who_ they are. 

Dangerous territory. 

In a blink of an eye, two weeks pass, and Yifan still doesn’t know their name. 

To be fair, they don’t know his either—they’ve never asked and Yifan has never volunteered the knowledge. It’s already exceedingly awkward for him to sit in front of the mirror this much. (Much less talk to it, even if he’s gotten over that. Mostly.) Before this, he hadn’t even owned a mirror that wasn’t nailed to the bathroom wall. 

_How far I’ve come, huh?_

He whistles, swaying his grocery bags as he waits for the elevator. For once, he’s deviating from his norm of fried noodles for dinner, even if he does plan on having the supermarket hot-food-counter’s discounted dim sum which is honestly not far off. 

But the other bag has actual grocery stuff—ingredients to make wonton noodles, because the someone in the mirror had asked about his favourite food—and wonton noodles aren’t anything special, but the someone in the mirror seemed curious nonetheless. There’s enough wheat flour and kansui and eggs in the bag to feed him for a week and like a follow-up thought, he wonders if he’ll tire of wonton noodles. 

_You haven’t tired of takeout udon_ , his brain supplies, _and it’s been eight months._

“I suppose so,” he mutters, a bit peeved that his own subconscious has evolved to sass him. 

::

Yifan hasn’t made wonton noodles in years, and his grandma isn’t there to help, so the first batch turns out awful. The someone in the mirror seems to find endless amusement in this, laughing as he stares down the failed noodles. The mirror shakes with their mirth, clacking against the tile kitchen floor. 

“Why didn’t I just buy ready-made noodles,” he moans, tipping his failure into the trash. He’s hungry and sore from kneading and he doesn’t even have the noodles to comfort him for it. _ur dumb_ , the someone in his mirror supplies. 

“You’re right,” Yifan says, picking up his phone. Delivery udon, once again. 

::

The first success comes not the next attempt, or the attempt after that, but the fifth time he tries. It is the next Saturday, and he bought a pasta machine yesterday. He doesn’t think his shoulders have been this sore since his third year of university when Minseok decided it would be nice to get the whole group gym memberships and drag them to the gym with him. 

_!!!!!_ , writes the someone in the mirror. 

“!!!!!” says Yifan, bringing a bite of noodle to his mouth. They’re a bit too perfect and uniform, courtesy of the pasta machine, but they smell just like his childhood. He tries not to moan. 

_good?_ they ask as Yifan cleans up the kitchen. 

“The noodles?” he says, rinsing the soup ladle. “Uhh, pretty good I guess? But nothing close to what my grandma used to make.” 

_it’s been a long time since I’ve had homemade food_ , they write. _there’s nothing here_

It’s more information than they’ve ever revealed before. Yifan is instantly curious— _where is ‘here’_ , _who are you_ , _are you human_ , he wants to ask. He wants to ask. 

“Really?” 

_I’m stuck in ur mirror_ , they write. It’s almost deadpan. It drags a surprised laugh out of Yifan, and he begins drying off his bowls. 

“That’s fair.” 

He’s drifting off to sleep when he realises he didn’t actually end up asking. 

::

He learns their name a few days after. 

“Weird question, but what’s your name?” 

_my name?_

“Ah, like something you call yourself?” 

_I know. I was just surprised u asked. my name is jongdae. and im male, btw_

“Jongdae, huh?” He rolls it on his tongue. “Jongdae. I’m Yifan.” 

_nice to meet you, yifan_

::

More frequently now, Yifan talks to the someone in the mirror— _Jongdae_ , he thinks, with a stupid grin more often than not. Jongdae is sharp and witty and quick. Talking to Jongdae is easy—he doesn’t demand much from him, always content with Yifan’s short replies. Banter is quick and easy, and silence is always comfortable. 

Helps that he can read Yifan’s mind. Probably. Yifan is more and more convinced of this every day that passes, but Jongdae remains elusive. 

But—it’s become nice to have him around. He’s less alone—in the nice-heartwarming-mirror-friend way, not the cursed-demon-in-cursed-mirror way. 

And Jongdae is an enigma. 

He gets Yifan to actually _have_ a schedule (one that’s more than _wake up at 6AM to go to work, the rest is up to God_ ), in such an underhanded way that when Yifan blanches when he finds himself automatically pausing his perusal of a movie theory thread at 7PM sharp—to make dinner. 

_Make_ dinner. Not order delivery udon. Who is he, even? Who has he become? 

::

Before, Yifan had been an oatmeal person. He’d been an oatmeal person because, one glorious day, oatmeal had gone very much on sale, and on a whim he bought enough to last three years. “You’re gonna get sick of it,” Zitao laughed, half-incredulous and half-horrified. 

Yifan doesn’t get sick of food. Yet here he is, two years into his three-year supply of oatmeal, perusing the cereal aisle. “This is your fault,” he says when he has to relocate his oatmeal stash to make room for the family-size box of cereal he’d bought, shaking the box in the vague direction of Jongdae/the mirror. He still ends up dropping off a dozen boxes of instant oats at the supermarket donation bin. 

_I just said to get some variety_ , Jongdae writes. _not buy out the store’s cereal stock_

“This is all your fault.” 

_u couldve bought fruit to put in your oatmeal. that’s still variety_

“Your fault.” 

::

He does end up buying fruit at his next supermarket trip. Summer season fruits, and all that. 

::

Yifan is jolted from sleep by a crash. His hand immediately goes toward the lamp on his nightstand, flicking it on. There aren’t any noises for a long time, and he’s about to write the crash off as something he imagined when he hears something else. From his living room. 

In hindsight he probably should’ve picked something else up that wasn’t his phone, or at least had 119 dialed. All he does is clutch his phone and flick on the living room lights, blinking at the sudden brightness. 

The mirror is fucking... swirling. 

It looks like something out of a movie, twisting and boiling and spitting out... _stuff_. The frame glows white. In spite of his good sense, Yifan approaches the portal to Hell/his mirror. 

There’s a particularly loud noise and then he’s falling backwards, head smacking the floor. There’s a weight on his chest. He shakes his head to clear it of the noise. 

He opens his eyes to wide ones staring back at him. 

A man. 

Just. 

Hovering over him. 

“Who the hell are you?” he says. Mysterious Man’s face is very close to Yifan’s. 

The man yelps, jumping off of Yifan and skittering back several steps. “I’m Jongin! You’re Yifan!” 

The man seems to be as dazed as Yifan is. Ruffled brown hair. A brown and green argyle sweater. He’s honestly rather innocent-looking, probably someone Yifan would trust if not for his sudden appearance on top of Yifan in Yifan’s apartment in the middle of the night. 

Yifan sits up, rubbing the back of his head. _Ow, what the fuck_. “How the fuck do you know my name?” 

“I was in the mirror,” Jongin says, holding his hands up. His eyes flick from Yifan to the mirror and back to Yifan again. 

He scrambles to the mirror, pressing his hands to the glass, but it’s back to normal. No more of the swirling sparking portal-y shit. 

Yifan frowns. _In the mirror?_ Jongin is saying something, but he doesn’t hear it. It’s too fucking early for him to be thinking this much. “What about Jongdae?” 

Jongin’s eyes light up. “Jongdae!” He looks around. “Where is he?” 

“In the mirror?” Yifan sighs, rubbing at his forehead. “I was... under the impression that Jongdae was the only one in the mirror.” 

The man—honestly, he’s just a _boy_ , he looks no older than twenty, wraps his arms around himself. “Ah. Well. Jongdae was the one talking with you most of the time.” He mumbles something else. 

“What?”

“I scared you the first time, so I...” he trails off, playing with his sleeve. “Jongdae said I could, but I didn’t...”

Ah. The bloody _HI_. 

They’re both silent for a long time. “How did I get here?” Jongin asks quietly. 

Yifan snorts. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?” 

“Well......... I guess so,” Jongin says. 

Yifan turns on his phone. It’s 4AM. “It’s 4AM, so.” The couch it is. He pours himself a glass of water, rummages around the hall closet for a pillow and a blanket, and sends a prayer up for the state of his back in the morning, all while Jongin sits on the floor and stares at him. 

“So,” he says again. 

Jongin tilts his head. “So?”

He halfway sits up. “Do you want to sleep?” 

“I don’t need to,” he offers, like that’s normal. There must be some expression on Yifan’s face because he jumps to his feet and waves his hands. “I mean! I don’t know how to explain it. The rules of the mirror realm are different from... the human realm. We’re human! It’s just... the mirror dimension is... It’s weird,” he finishes lamely. 

Yifan raises an eyebrow. “Well, you’re in the human world now, and if you’re as human as you say, you’ll be cranky in the morning. Just take the bed.” 

::

Yifan is cranky in the morning. 

It’s an unfortunate side effect of being woken up at 4AM by a man who claims to have been from your fucking mirror. And not even the fun, interesting one he’s been talking to for the past few weeks! 

Maybe he would be less torn up had it been Jongdae who materialised in the middle of his living room because Jongdae is cool and he’s 80% sure it wouldn’t be as awkward. He didn’t even know Jongin _existed_ up until a few hours ago. 

His prayers for the well being of his back have evidently not been heard, as he wakes to an awful stiffness that will certainly manifest as blinding pain the moment he moves. He sits up in a swift motion in hopes that the speed of the movement would make it hurt less. 

It doesn’t. His back cracks the entire way up, speedily. 

Jongin’s already awake—didn’t actually sleep, by the looks of the shadows beneath his eyes. He seems to be having a heart-to-heart with Yifan’s fridge. And Yifan has known Jongin for _maybe_ four hours so he can’t really say what ‘typical Jongin behaviour’ would consist of, but he’s... talking to an ice dispenser, for fuck’s sake. 

(Which is, admittedly, probably not a good indication of not-ok-ness, considering he has conversations with his mirror on the daily. But _still_.) 

Jongin doesn’t notice Yifan until he’s tapping him on the shoulder and even then he jumps, like Yifan snuck up on him (which is the farthest thing from true considering Yifan’s heavy-footed and also is limping because he slept on a 150cm long couch). 

He blinks at Yifan owlishly. 

“Yifan!” His blinks again and he steps aside to reveal an... honestly, really intricate breakfast, laid out over the kitchen counter. “I made you breakfast.” 

There’s tea and _niúròubǐng_ and shrimp dumplings and a bowl of oatmeal and a plate of sliced fruit, arranged in a colourful layered circle. There isn’t even a tower of dirty dishes as he’s used to when Zitao’s insomnia had him up at 4AM making cheesecake from scratch—his pans have been washed and are dripping on his drying rack/“temporary” plate holder. Some of the kitchen’s boxes have been unpacked too, emptied boxes flattened and stacked in the corner. 

It’s surprisingly nice and weird at the same time. 

(Not that Yifan has anything especially private within his kitchen boxes, but... but he’d been terribly uncaring when he packed up. He’d broken a few plates—he’d picked the bigger pieces out but he’s sure there are still shards inside.) 

Up close, the dark circles are even deeper, and Jongin’s eyes are hazy and half-lidded. “Did you sleep at all?” he asks, patting Jongin’s arm. Jongin lists toward him. “Hey now. Didn’t I tell you to sleep?” 

“I haven’t slept in 60 years,” Jongin says. It doesn’t seem like something he should’ve said. His eyes widen, and he claps his hand over his mouth for further damning effect. 

“Alright,” Yifan says, keeping his tone light so he doesn’t blurt out _what the fuck_. “Okay.” He takes Jongin by the shoulders and frog-walks him to the bedroom. He pulls a fresh shirt from his sleep-shirts drawer. 

“We can discuss _after_ you catch up on 60 years of sleep.” 

::

The breakfast Jongin made is good, if not a bit cold. He pops the _niúròubǐng_ into the microwave and he eats the peaches and strawberries while he waits, stabbing each slice with his chopstick. He’s stuffing half of the food into the fridge for Jongin when he wakes up, when he remembers—

“Oh, shit,” he says through a mouthful of oatmeal, “ _Jongdae_.” 

_nice to finally be remembered -___-_ , Jongdae writes. 

“Oh, piss off,” Yifan says, waving his chopstick-impaled strawberry at the mirror. “I have reasonable excuse, given your friend, whom you conveniently have not mentioned at all, appeared in the middle of my home at fuck knows what time in the morning and stole my bed!”

He punctuates this by aggressively biting the strawberry off the end of his chopstick. 

_and what do you suggest I do about that :/_

“Use your magic to make my back stop hurting.” 

_I can’t do that_

“I assumed so,” Yifan sighs. The microwave beeps and he, predictably, burns his hand on the hot side of the bowl. “Ow. So why didn’t you tell me about Jongin?” 

_it never really came up?_

“How could it just not come up,” Yifan grouses, breaking the _ròubǐng_ apart with his chopsticks. “Seems pretty important.” 

_how was I supposed to just say ‘actually there are two of us here except the other guy is scared of you because you and your friend screamed bloody murder when he first tried talking to you’ in casual conversation?_

Yifan frowns. “When you say it like that...” He blows on his shrimp dumpling. “Fine then. Do you have any idea as to how he got here?” 

_your guess is as good as mine. the only one who can let us out is junmyeon and the last I saw him was 1957—_

“1957...” 

_—just up and vanished one day and left us in this fucking mirror_

“Hold on, who is Junmyeon?” 

_the guy who put us here_

“Is...” He hesitates. “1957 was a long time ago.” 

_yes. if u didn’t lie about it being 2020, it was 63 yrs ok_

“This Junmyeon guy...” Oh, God, Yifan doesn’t want to be the guy to break the news to someone who has been stuck in a mirror for several decades that he may not get out. “There’s a possibility he’s... not on Earth anymore?” 

The mirror shakes. Yifan’s come to learn that it’s laughter. 

He frowns. “What’s so funny?” 

_there’s no way he’s dead. he’s like a cockroach. and if he had the audacity to die without letting us out I would kill him_

“That’s not how it works,” Yifan laughs, chest lightening. “Ok then. You want out, right?” 

_I mean, it does get boring in here. it wouldnt suck to get out_

“Alright. How do I find Junmyeon.” Jongdae laughs again. Yifan feels stupid, feeling his face go hot, “What?” 

_you can’t find junmyeon. he appears and disappears as he pleases. you can only pray that he doesn’t end up on your doorstep at 2pm on a saturday _

Of course it wouldn’t be easy. He finishes off his _ròubǐng_ , chewing on the last bite slowly. “Ok. Jongdae?” 

_yes?_

“Tell me about Jongin, considering I have to take care of him for now.” 

_he can take care of himself. he’s older than you._

“No fucking way that kid is older than me.” 

_well, he was born in 1935_

Yifan breaks out the mental math and... “That means he should be... 85 years old.” 

_..._

“So... So are you going to elaborate or are you just going to drop the ‘I’m immortal’ bomb and leave?” 

_we aren’t immortal. he’ll age by human realm rules as long as he’s in the human realm. _

Yifan rolls his eyes. Sounds immortal enough. “When were you born then, Mr. Not-Immortal?”

1503

“Huh.” 

  
“Wait, _**what**???_” 

::

Jongin sleeps for 26 hours. When 12AM rolls around and his eyes begin to droop and Jongin is _still_ asleep, he piles his spare duvets onto the rug and tucks a folded bath sheet into a pillowcase. He’s not allowing his back to suffer the loveseat ever again. The curled up position on his makeshift futon does no favours for his back, but anything is better than the couch again. Anything. 

God, he’s going to have so much laundry to do. 

He’s sitting on the couch browsing fold-out beds when Jongin awakens. Of course, Jongin _has_ to stand and watch him and not say anything for an undetermined amount of time, so when Yifan looks up from his bed-searching and sees Jongin standing there silently, he almost throws his computer. 

“Don’t scare me like that, Jesus,” Yifan says, running his hands through his hair. “Um... Did you sleep well? Are you hungry?” 

Jongin nods. They eat Yifan’s subpar oatmeal together, standing silently by the counter. 

“So, uh,” Yifan says as he washes their bowls, “do you want to go somewhere?” 

Jongin’s eyes are very very round. “Go where?” 

“Bed shopping.” 

“Okay.” 

“Okay.”

There’s no way in hell Jongin is going out in the late summer heat in the thick sweater that he appeared in Yifan’s house in, so Yifan cracks his back and cracks open his overdue-to-be unpacked boxes to find him something to wear. He’s not optimistic. Yifan curses his wide, wide shoulders. 

He finds an ex-boyfriend’s shirt. It’s a couple t-shirt, to make matters worse— _IF LOST, RETURN TO YIFAN_ is written across the chest. He sighs, puts it to the side, and tears into another box. 

Another five minutes of searching yields nothing. He looks at the _IF LOST, RETURN TO YIFAN_ shirt. _This’ll have to do._

“I’m sorry,” Yifan says as he hands Jongin the shirt. “This is the only thing that’d fit you.” 

“It’s okay,” Jongin replies quietly. He quickly strips off the oversized sleep shirt and changes into the _IF LOST, RETURN TO YIFAN_ shirt. It’s a little tight. Yifan _really_ needs to stop calling it the ‘ _IF LOST, RETURN TO YIFAN_ shirt’ in his head. 

Jongin finally smiles, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “It’s been so long since I’ve been outside,” he says, eyes sparkling. 

Just as they’re putting shoes on, the buzzer goes off. 

_Of course_ , Yifan thinks when he sees who’s behind the door, _of-fucking-course_. Speak of the devil and he shall appear, or something like that, right? 

“Yixing,” he says. 

—Though it’s probably not kind to refer to your first love and college boyfriend as the devil— 

“Fanfan,” Yixing returns, sweetly. He looks Yifan up and down and back up again, curling his lip. “You look well.” 

“What are you doing here?” 

“I was in the area.” 

He’s so _different_ now—it makes Yifan ache. He dresses differently. His hair is different. He speaks to Yifan with an edge to each of his words where there used to be nothing but softness, and it makes him ache. 

“And a certain mutual friend hit me up, asked me if I’d like to... see you. And check up on you for him. Because you’ve been ignoring his texts.” Yixing shrugs a perfect shoulder. “So here I am. Checking up on you.” 

His heart sinks. _Lu Han_. 

Of course Lu Han would do this—that is, send Yifan’s ex to _check up on him_. Because Lu Han thinks they broke up amicably. Because Lu Han thinks they’re still good friends. 

It’d been going downward for months. And then, Yixing was offered to dance overseas. A relationship couldn’t be held together with bits of scotch tape, especially when they were being swung at by a baseball bat, and near the end of Yifan’s fourth and Yixing’s third year, they broke it off with a fight worthy of a 2015 Taylor Swift music video. 

Of course they didn’t _tell_ anyone because all of Yifan’s friends were Yixing’s friends and all of Yixing’s friends were Yifan’s. It’d be fucked up to make them choose who to side with. And Yifan and Yixing both know that, were they to choose, they’d probably choose Yixing. 

He doesn’t like to think about it. 

And so they pretended to break it off amicably, and pretended to be friends for the rest of the semester. Yixing boarded a plane four years ago and didn’t look back. 

“Hi?” Jongin says, and Yifan nearly facepalms. And then he panics. The _IF LOST, RETURN TO YIFAN_ shirt had been _Yixing’s_. 

Before, of course, he flung it at Yifan and stormed out in a fit of rage. 

Yixing raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t mention the shirt but Yifan knows he knows. “You got a new boyfriend? Lu-ge didn’t tell me that.” There’s a terrible, awkward silence. Yixing twists the knife. “Or could it be that you didn’t tell your best friend?” 

It makes Yifan bristle. He doesn’t _lie_. “He’s just...” _Just what? One of the guys in my cursed mirror?_ “...my friend,” he lies. 

“Your friend.” 

“I’ll text Lu back.” He runs a hand through his hair, offers a small smile. “It was nice seeing you, Yixing.” He’ll probably sit in his bedroom with the lights off later, replaying the conversation in his head and trying not to want to die, but. “You look well.”

Yixing’s face softens. He sighs. “Okay. Bye, Yifan.” 

Yifan thinks he sees the old Yixing who loved him for a split second. 

“Bye.” 

::

They don’t end up going bed shopping. Yifan sits down on his pile of duvets and has his mental breakdown right there. He feels really bad for Jongin, who seems pretty concerned for him. But he hasn’t seen Yixing in four years—he didn’t even know he was back in China. It’s as if the dam holding back all his loneliness was knocked down. 

He’s jerked from his bubble of sadness and self-loathing by Jongin touching his shoulder. “I... made dinner,” he says. He’s changed out of the _IF LOST, RETURN TO YIFAN_ shirt and into a plain white one, and safety-pinned the shoulders so they don’t slip. 

They eat on the couch. Silently. Yifan is biting into a green bean when Jongin says, as casually as he can, “Yixing... he was important to you, right?” 

It makes Yifan laugh. Jongin stares at him, mouth forming a pout. 

“It’s okay, Jongin.” 

It’s been four years. He’s okay. 

::

Yifan passes a library on his way to and from work. 

Usually he doesn’t notice the buildings on his route, because he never goes—but this day, he’s thinking about Jongdae. He’s thinking about Jongdae, and by extension, the mirror. 

How to get Jongdae out of the mirror. 

He’s thinking this as he drives past the library, and even though Jongdae’s words— _the only one who can let us out is junmyeon—you can’t **find** junmyeon—he appears and disappears as he wishes_—echo in his head, he thinks: what if there are books on magic? 

Yifan isn’t a reader. He likes math. He’s never had a library card before, receives a jarring wake-up call from the minimum wage front desk employee. She’s nice about it, but he’s sure she’ll laugh about him once he leaves. 

Two hours and six books later, the library is closing for the night and he isn’t any closer. “magic”, as a search word, doesn’t seem to be specific enough considering Yifan gets really into the introduction of a book only for it to turn out to be a magic _tricks_ book. 

He checks out the remaining five books in his stack and goes home.

::

Jongin doesn’t seem very interested in the books that begin to overtake all the flat surfaces in Yifan’s apartment. He uses a book of western fairy tales as a coaster, which Yifan is sure would irritate some avid book-lover out there—but ah, well. It wasn’t of much use anyway. 

He does become interested when Yifan starts drawing lines with table salt in front of the mirror. Interested, as in, he begins to laugh, and Yifan accidentally breaks his salt circle because it’s the first time Jongin has laughed, and.

Well. 

::

For how long he’s lived alone, Yifan adjusts easily to having a roommate again. It’s like he was meant to live with someone. Jongin is quiet and days pass easily and sweetly, like honey. 

Living with someone is the quickest way to learn about them. He learns that Jongin likes coffee, and they spend an afternoon cleaning an old coffee machine. He thinks it might’ve belonged to Minseok once upon a time. “It’s good,” Jongin says, but his words are soaked with homesickness. 

He learns that Jongin has a bad habit of biting and licking his lips, drying them out in the process. Jongin dislikes beeswax lip balm, cites “it stings” as the reason why. 

Jongin likes to sit outside and stare at the sky. Be it sunny or cloudy or rainy or nighttime, Jongin leans on the balcony rail with his face tilted to the sky. Yifan wonders if it’s because he’s been stuck in the mirror for so long, and surreptitiously turns the mirror toward the open window so Jongdae can see the sky too. 

Jongin likes chicken. Jongin is good at cooking, and enjoys it. Jongin likes to grocery shop and he has a freaky talent for picking out the good fruit from the bad. Jongin likes wearing Yifan’s sweaters and hoodies, even though it’s summer, even though Yifan goes sort of red when he sees Jongin lounging around in his highschool hoodie. 

He learns more about Jongin in a week than he knows about Jongdae in total, and... 

He still speaks to Jongdae through the mirror on the days Jongin sleeps in (which is every day—Jongin really took ‘catch up on 60 years of sleep’ to heart). Good morning’s, how did you sleep’s, and... 

That’s it. 

Yifan misses their banter. Jongin is just too... Jongin. He likes Jongin fine, and he hopes Jongin likes him back, but they don’t _talk_. 

“You there?” he asks one particularly lonely morning, knocking gently on the glass. 

_hey_ , Jongdae writes. _what’s up_

“Well, not Jongin, firstly,” he replies, poking at his sad attempt at fried eggs. It’s a sad attempt at a joke. “So, I was thinking...”

_don’t hurt yourself doing that_

“—man, fuck you. Anyway.” He pauses to break apart his fried egg and remember what he was going to say. “You know how I got the mirror from this freaky shop, right?” 

_no_

“It’s a rhetorical question,” Yifan sighs. “Wait, can’t you see through the mirror?” 

_first thing we heard in a long time was your voice. and then you and your grey haired friend started screaming _

He’s getting more and more convinced that he dreamed the whole thing. If not even the people in his mirror remember the shop, what other sane person would believe him? 

_tell me abt the freaky shop_

Yifan sighs. “Well, it apparently closed 60 years ago, but I swear on my fucking heart that it looked completely fine when I went in. It just looked like any other store.” Sort of. He thinks back to all the weird crap that the store had supposedly sold. “And there was a guy with these... deer antlers.” 

_wait. deer antlers? was it suhos magic shop, or some shitty name like that?_

“How do you know Suho?”

_suho is junmyeon_

“Damn, no wonder he was so fucking weird. Of course _Deer-man_ locks people into mirrors for fun,” he muses. “I could go back to the store to...” he trails off, tapping his chopsticks against the bowl. “Maybe he’s still there?” 

_maybe_

“Maybe who’s still where?” Jongin says. His hair is even more of a mess than it usually is, two tufts sticking out like lopsided pointed ears. He’s holding a pillow to his chest, and yet another of Yifan’s shirts is sliding off his shoulder. 

“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” Yifan teases, leaning back in his chair. A dangerous endeavor, considering his chair is a flimsy plastic thing that folds with the slightest opposite pressure. “Did you sleep well?” 

Jongin rubs at his eye with a fist. “Yup.” He opens the window, pokes his face out, and takes a deep breath. It’s a sort of morning ritual for him, and he smiles happily when he’s done. “I’m hungry.” 

“There’s oatmeal and eggs on the stove,” Yifan says, offering his chair to Jongin. God, when did he become so fond of this kid? 

“What were you saying?” Jongin says afterwards. It’s 1PM. Yifan’s figuring out how to work the TV when Jongin comes out of the shower, dewy and pretty. He smells like Yifan’s shampoo. His hair is dripping, and Yifan laughs before taking the towel and rubbing him dry. 

“Hm?” Yifan asks, distracted. 

“In the morning.” Jongin grabs a pillow, curling up on the corner of Yifan’ sofa like a cat. “When you were talking to Dae.” 

“Ah, that.” Yifan plugs the TV cord in and it lights up. He claps. “Jongin?” 

“Yeah?”

“How do you feel about visiting a magic shop?” 

::

SUHO’S MAGIC SHOP is still closed. 

“Why—why does it look like this?” Jongin whispers, a note of horror in his voice. He touches one of the wind chimes before Yifan can shout about _the rust_. 

“People think it’s haunted,” Yifan says. 

Jongin stares at the ruin for a while longer. He sniffs once, rubbing at his face with his sleeve. “He’s not here. Let’s go.” 

::

Jongin goes to bed immediately once they go home. He hadn’t even cheered up when Yifan took him to eat fried chicken, which left Yifan stumped. 

_no?_

Yifan just shakes his head. He’s tired too. He’d made it out to be like Junmyeon would be just sitting in the dilapidated shop waiting for them and somewhere along the way he began to believe it. 

_it was expected_ , Jongdae writes, but he seems sad too. 

::

Jongin retreats into himself even more after they visit the magic shop. He’d already been taciturn, though Yifan likes to think he began to open up a little. He barely acknowledges Yifan anymore. Barely acknowledges anything. Wakes up early to stare at the rain or sleeps until deep into the afternoon. Eats Yifan’s shitty food without complaints. 

In a few short days, it’s like Yifan went back to living alone, how silent Jongin became. 

_he grew up at the shop_ , Jongdae says when Yifan questions him about it. _and hes probably missing junmyeon. like it solidified in his mind that junmyeon isnt here, when hes always been there for nini_

A week passes. Yifan continues going to the library after work, reading until they close and checking out the books he doesn’t get to. 

Before, Jongin had waited for him to return, resting his chin on his hands as he listened to Yifan talk about the stuff he’d read about. Now, he returns to a usually-dark usually-silent apartment. He doesn’t even _see_ Jongin much anymore. 

He tries whatever mirror-adjacent spells/sorcery/hexes he reads about, as bogus as they seem, as much as Jongdae laughs at him for some of them. “I’m trying to help you,” Yifan groans, cleaning chalk off his floor. 

Until. 

The notebook is _old_. He finds it in the stacks, finds out it isn’t in the library’s archive, and asks Liyin in the front if he can just buy it from the library. He’s drawn to it the same way he was drawn to the mirror, so that’s a good thing, right? 

But it’s three weeks until he can actually sit down and read it. It’s a Friday, at the end of a particularly big project, and his office has been awarded a week of break. As congratulations, well done, his managers invite everyone out for dinner at the new restaurant down the street. Duck wraps, black bean noodles, seafood congee and _yóutiáo_ , lobster, _xiǎolóngbāo_. 

An order of Peking duck warming the passenger seat, Yifan drives home. The first time Jongin had duck, his eyes lit up. He rubs his nose, feeling glum. _A smile_ , he thinks. _Just one._

He opens the door to Jongin. He barely gets out, “Hey, Jong—” before Jongin is wrapping his arms around him, burying his face in Yifan’s neck. 

“I thought you left me,” Jongin mumbles. Guilt sinks into Yifan’s chest—he hadn’t told Jongin that he would be back late, did he? And he was a routine person, rarely deviating from his schedule. When he didn’t arrive home at 8:30 sharp, Jongin must’ve gotten worried. 

He puts down the Peking duck and holds Jongin as he starts to shake, tears seeping into his shirt. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he whispers over and over, combing his fingers through Jongin’s knotted hair. 

“Don’t leave, ok?” Jongin says, eyes shiny. He glares at Yifan, sniffling a bit. 

“Okay,” Yifan says, rubbing a tear from Jongin’s cheek. 

“Promise me.” 

“I promise.” He half-smiles, patting Jongin’s head one more time. “This _is_ my home, you know?” 

“Yeah.” Jongin turns away, scrubbing at his eyes. 

Yifan picks up the takeout bag, peeking inside to make sure nothing spilled. “Anyway, I brought you something,” he says, putting the bag down on the kitchen counter. Jongin follows, fidgeting with the sleeves of his hoodie. The containers are still warm to touch. 

“It’s duck,” Yifan supplies, picking up one of the wraps and folding a slice of duck, cucumber, and hoisin sauce into it. His grandma had taught him how to fold it so it didn’t break apart at the first bite, but Jongin puts the entire thing in his mouth so it doesn’t really matter in the end. 

Yifan laughs, rubbing away the smudge of sauce on the corner of his lip. “Do you like it?” Jongin swallows, rubbing his throat. Yifan waits. 

Then, Jongin’s eyes get shiny again. Yifan’s smile drops. “Hey, what’s wrong,” he says, rubbing Jongin’s shoulders. “It’s okay if you don’t like it.” 

Jongin sniffs angrily, spins and grabs Yifan by the tie, and kisses him hard. 

Yifan...

He doesn’t know what to think. He tastes like Peking duck and hoisin sauce and his lips are so, so soft. He knows they’re soft. He just touched them. He _is_ touching them. Currently. He— 

He cups Jongin’s face and kisses back. 

::

When they part, Jongin’s forehead resting on his collarbone, Yifan whispers, “that means you like it, right?”

Jongin slaps him and laughs. 

::

Yifan spends the first day of his break just... kissing Jongin. It’s amazing and wonderful and he’s a terrible person and the notebook from three weeks ago just sits there, mocking him. 

He’s just glad Jongin, proverbially speaking, is back. 

::

By the third day (the second day was also spent with Jongin, talking more than kissing (but there was a fair amount of kissing)), he breaks open the old book. Jongin sneezes at the dust on the book and quickly loses interest, laying his head on Yifan’s lap. 

He skims the pages about portals and attire and potions and fucking summoning circles. It’s the same brand of bogus as the other books he’s read, but with a quality of realness that keeps him from closing the book and giving up. For one, it’s a notebook—written by hand, diagrams drawn by hand, pictures pasted in by hand. Nobody would spend this much effort writing fake shit, he hopes. 

He gets to the part about _MAGIC MIRRORS_. There’s a drawing of a mirror. He stares at it for a long time before he realises it looks really, really similar to his. 

Yifan gently slides a pillow underneath the now-sleeping Jongin’s head, going over to the mirror. _special class of mirrors made specifically for usage in witchcraft &wizardry_, the book says. _limited #, creator never disclosed their methods._

_what now?_ Jongdae asks, but Yifan is too entranced by the notebook. 

_To Establish Audio Connection: touch leaves in order: top, right, left, bottom. push circles marked with a star, counterclockwise order. form circle with hands for 10 secs. place ring fingers on orbs on the 1’ and 11’o’clock of mirror frame. P.S. removal of fingers prior to established connection shall sever the connection_

Yifan touches the carved leaves. He presses the circled stars. He makes an ‘o’ with his fingers, and holds it for ten seconds. 

It’s stupid, but he swallows it down and places his ring fingers on the round spheres. 

Almost immediately, the mirror begins to glow and writhe. Purple, white, colours he can’t describe. Sparking, swirling, bubbling. He almost lets go of the orbs in his shock. 

“— _the fuck what the fuck what the fuck_ —” 

The mirror returns to normal. Yifan stares at his own face in the mirror for a long, long time. The person continues to swear, though less violent. He thinks he hears shuffling. 

“Jongdae?” he says hesitantly. 

“Ugh, where’d my marker go...” Jongdae’s voice is pretty and high and echoey, though he thinks the latter might be because of the mirror. 

“Jongdae, I can hear you!” he yells, clutching the sides of the mirror. “It worked.” 

There’s a clatter. “What?” 

“The—the audio connection. Thing. From the book! It worked,” he repeats. 

“You can hear me?” Jongdae says. There’s a touch of incredulity to his voice. “Really?” 

Yifan almost laughs from sheer joy. “Yeah. Yeah, holy shit, it worked!” He jumps to his feet, doing a little victory dance. “Jongin! Jongin,” he says softly, shaking him awake, “I got it to work!” 

“Wha?” Jongin asks blearily, rubbing at his eyes. “The TV?” 

“No, dumbass,” Yifan laughs. “The mirror! We can hear him talk now.” 

Jongin blinks. Once, twice, thrice. He jumps off the couch, scrambling to the mirror. He puts his face very close to the glass. “Daedae? Can you hear me?” 

“I could always hear you, idiot,” Jongdae says, but he’s fond. “You can hear _me_ now.” 

Jongin rests his forehead against the glass. “Yeah.” 

::

In the days following, Jongin spends most of his time with the mirror. With Jongdae. He’s happier, brighter, and he kisses Yifan sweetly when they settle into bed. 

_He’s been lonely_ , Yifan tells himself. _Of course he wants someone familiar_. And Jongdae is the most familiar he has—they’d been stuck in the mirror together for 60 years, even though time in the mirror dimension supposedly “works differently”. 

Jongdae and Jongin are different from Yifan and Jongin or even Yifan and Jongdae. Jongdae dotes on Jongin—he doesn’t blame him. Jongin is very dote-on-able. Jongin—he _exudes_ light when he talks to Jongdae, smiling so widely his eyes form half-moons. They’re perfect. 

At the least, they’re very good friends. 

They seem like more. It only makes him feel shitty to speculate, but there’s a level of comfort and mutual understanding that he didn’t even have with Yixing. 

“Go spend time with your boyfriend,” he overhears Jongdae laugh. He’s doing work in the bedroom. He doesn’t like to work in his bedroom—but he got a desk delivered a few days ago, and. 

(And it’s fucking awkward listening to his ??boyfriend??/bedmate/friend-whom-he-kisses-sometimes talk to his best-friend-possible-ex-lover of over 60 years.)

Yifan tells himself, over and over, it’s just because they’re more familiar with each other. 

~~In the days following, Jongin spends less time with Yifan.~~

He’s not _jealous_. 

He’s not. 

::

To set up a ‘visual connection’ requires potion making and ingredients Yifan has never heard of. Both Jongin and Jongdae are stumped too, but, “it’s okay. There’s nothing interesting to see here, honestly,” Jongdae says. 

Yifan doesn’t know how to say he wants to know what Jongdae looks like without being weird, so he doesn’t. 

He’s sitting on the couch reading the notebook when he comes to the final subsection in the mirror section—

_Two ways to release person trapped within MAGIC MIRRORS: 1. released by the being who placed the person captive initially._

Well, he knows that. Suho/Deer-man/Junmyeon is MIA, though. 

_2\. shatter the mirror, severing the connection with mirror dimension. They who is trapped inside shall be ejected. weak points: flower (top), ‘handles’_

Yifan gets up, and stands in front of the mirror. 

::

Yifan stands in front of the mirror, hand raised to strike the flower, break the mirror, let Jongdae out. 

He hesitates. 

“What’cha doin’?” comes Jongdae’s voice. 

What _is_ he doing? Why can’t he move? He’d been looking for a way to break Jongdae out for days, _weeks_ , only to hesitate. Only to freeze. It’s not even a difficult situation—breaking a _mirror_ shouldn’t be taxing. 

But. 

He’d never given thought to what would happen after Jongdae got out of the mirror. It didn’t seem important—why think about what would happen _after_ he got Jongdae out of the mirror if he couldn’t even do the _getting out of the mirror_? 

Jongin’s smile flashes in his head. 

Jongdae’s laugh flashes in his head. 

What if Jongdae and Jongin just walk out the door? They don’t have an obligation to stay with Yifan. He’s just the dude who accidentally picked up their mirror. 

They’d probably be happier together. 

“Nothing,” he says. 

::

Yifan hides the notebook away. 

Out of sight, out of mind. 

::

“I miss you,” he overhears Jongin say to Jongdae, vulnerable and sad. He has his forehead leant against the mirror again, as if he can touch Jongdae through the glass. 

“I’m right here,” Jongdae replies. “We’ll be back together soon, yeah? Yifan is figuring out a way to get me out of here. Trust in him.” 

Yifan has to turn away. 

“The book doesn’t say anything about getting someone out of a magic mirror?” Jongin asks, hours later, as they lie in bed. His eyes are bright in the near-darkness. 

“No,” Yifan lies. 

::

“Hey,” Jongdae says out of the blue, “it’s been a while since we talked.” 

Yifan drops the hot pan he’s holding. Fried rice scatters over the floor. 

It’s early in the morning, and Jongin is still asleep. “Shit,” Yifan yelps, kneeling down to sweep it up with his hands before, _ouch, hot rice hot_. “Shit. Shit, fuck.” 

Jongin comes stumbling out of the bedroom, hair sticking up in a million directions, to Yifan sitting on the ground, just... staring at the still-steaming fried rice. “Oh, God,” he says, rubbing at his eyes. “Are you okay?” 

“Shit. Yes.” Yifan jumps to his feet, putting the pan into the sink and brushing rice off his pants. He heaves a breath, tries not to choke on his words. “Jongdae startled me.” 

“Dang,” Jongdae comments, a laugh in his voice, “I didn’t think it’d been so long that you forgot that your mirror talks.” 

Guilt settles like a stone in his stomach. It has been exactly four days. It was easy to avoid Jongdae—he just holed himself up in the bedroom while Jongin talked to him. And Jongin was _always_ talking to Jongdae. 

“I have to get to work,” he says instead, quickly sweeping up the rice and putting it in the garbage. Jongin stares at him with round eyes. “J—Just order something for lunch, ok?” He takes half the bills out of his wallet and puts it on the counter instead of into Jongin’s hands. “I’ll go grocery shopping tonight.” 

“Okay,” Jongin says, and presses a kiss to the corner of Yifan’s mouth. “Love you.” 

Yifan only feels sicker. 

::

They wait. It feels like they’re waiting, waiting for the day that Junmyeon will appear on his doorstep, 2PM on a Saturday. 

“Just be patient,” Jongdae says. “I don’t mind it in here,” Jongdae says. “Junmyeon will have to come around eventually, right?” Jongdae says. “Then I’ll beat him up for leaving us.”

Jongdae does a good job of assuring Jongin. 

Junmyeon _will_ come. Junmyeon _will_ get Jongdae out. Junmyeon _will_ do this, Junmyeon _will_ do that. 

Days, weeks pass. 

Yifan doesn’t know how they’re still so optimistic. 

::

They wait. 

::

‘Just be patient’ becomes ‘I don’t know’. 

‘Junmyeon will have to come around eventually’ becomes ‘I don’t know’. 

::

Jongin gets a job at a small, family-run café a block down from Yifan’s office. He’s restless—clouds can’t entertain Jongin for _that_ long. It’s out of a weird combination of boredom and desire to see the outside world. How it’s changed. 

A café is perfect—Jongin loves coffee. 

“You know,” Jongin says on the evening of his first day, “I actually used to hate coffee.” 

Yifan’s eyebrows raise. “Really?” 

“Junmyeon-hyung liked it a lot,” Jongin says. He smells like cake. “I always made Jongdae drink mine in secret.” He pauses, considers something. “He probably knew, you know? Junmyeon-hyung...” 

He looks out the window. Yifan hums, tracing circles into Jongin’s back. 

“I miss him.” 

::

It’s only fate that Yifan and Jongin’s one-month anniversary comes during one of the busiest two weeks of his year, so he forgets, until _Jongdae_ of all people reminds him. 

(To be fair, Jongin didn’t mention it either. “He probably forgot too,” Jongdae says. “Don’t sweat it. You just seem like someone who would find anniversaries important, so I thought I’d remind you.”)

(He’s right.)

“What Jongin likes?” Jongdae repeats. “Why are you asking me?” 

Yifan blanches. _They... didn’t date?_ “...Because you’re his friend?” he says, but it’s awkward, stilted. 

“I’m fucking with you,” Jongdae laughs, after a terrible silence. “You know we used to date, right?” It’s a confirmation Yifan doesn’t need right now, but he shoves his stupid feelings down and nods. “Jongin... He likes his lovers, not the date. You could stay inside, watch TV, just spend time with him; and he’d be happy.” 

There’s a forlorn sadness in the way he speaks, but Yifan tries not to dwell on it. 

::

Technically, it’s a week after their one-month. Yifan takes the afternoon off, walking to the grocer’s and spending far too long picking out a bouquet of flowers. He buys a sandwich, wolfs it down in his car, but it doesn’t kill the butterflies in his stomach. 

Jongin’s sitting on the balcony, skygazing, as he always is. 

“You’re home early,” Jongin says, surprised. He presses a kiss to Yifan’s knuckles, taking the bouquet Yifan holds out to him. “These are for me? What for?” 

“It’s our one month anniversary,” Yifan says. _Well, one month and one week, but close enough._ He has to stop himself from fidgeting in his excitement. He leans down, pulling a rose from the bouquet, and tucking it into Jongin’s hair. “I was thinking we could go on a day? To a street festival?” 

Upon passing under the banner, Jongin spots a takoyaki stand, tugging a laughing Yifan behind him. The festival is loud, filled with things to see, things to do. Jongin _sparkles_. 

“Thank you,” Jongin says, leaning up to kiss Yifan. 

They eat, they shop, they play games. They wander around, letting whatever catches their eye mark their path. Yifan buys Jongin a shirt with the festival mascot on it. 

A carnival game catches Jongin’s eye. He’s intent on winning the grand prize, a huge stuffed Western dragon with holographic wings. Yifan doesn’t have the heart to tell him it’s likely rigged, and leaves Jongin with several bills so he can play. 

As he’s doing that, a glasswork stand catches Yifan’s eye. It’s so glowy. The sun is beginning to set, straight down the street, and the glass figurines catch the golden light and bounce it around. 

Yifan picks up a small figurine of a bear, hugging a flower. “How much for this?” he asks. He glances back at Jongin, who is still trying to land the ball in the cup. The person minding the stand follows his gaze, and smiles dotingly. 

“$5 if it’s for a lover,” she says. Yifan smiles and puts a $20-bill into the jar. He sits down on a bench beside the crepe stand, watching Jongin play. He ends up winning the stuffed dragon, hoisting it into the air and cheering. He looks around for Yifan, and brightens up when he sees Yifan holding two crepes. 

“For you,” he says, giving the stuffed dragon to Yifan. 

“For you,” Yifan says, handing him a crepe and the little bag with the bear figure. Jongin beams, sitting down next to Yifan and tucking his head under his chin. He gets whip cream on his nose, and tilts his face toward Yifan so he can rub it off. 

“Happy anniversary, Yifan.” 

::

They continue to wait. 

::

“I can barely remember what Jongdae looks like,” Jongin confesses, head in Yifan’s lap. It’s a dreary fall day. They were supposed to go to an orchard, go apple picking, but rain settled in and ruined it. Yifan stays silent, continuing to braid little sections of Jongin’s hair, which has gotten long. 

Jongin sighs. 

He leans up to kiss Yifan. Run his fingers through Yifan’s wet hair. Yifan is... a bit unmoored, to be honest. He tilts his chin up as Jongin kisses down his neck, rubbing his thumb into the sensitive spot behind his ear. 

“Hold on,” Yifan gasps. “What are you doing?” 

_Weren’t we just talking about Jongdae?_ his frazzled brain wonders. 

“Kissing you?” Jongin says, tilting his head. He sits back, though he reaches out to tuck Yifan’s hair behind his ear. 

Yifan sucks in a breath. “I’m not Jongdae,” he says, quiet. 

“I know,” Jongin says, biting his lip. He twists, untwists, twists his shirt; Yifan’s eyes track the movement. “You’re not—not a _replacement_ for him. I just...”

He looks up, and his eyes are sad and so, so round. 

“Can’t I love two people at the same time?” 

::

“You’re avoiding me again,” Jongdae sing-songs. Yifan nearly drops his laptop. 

“I...” 

He has been. He didn’t even notice himself doing it, until he did, but at that point he thought _why not continue_. _Jongdae wouldn’t notice_ , he told himself, _Jongdae has Jongin_. 

Apparently Jongdae did notice. 

“Come here,” Jongdae says, making beckoning noises. Yifan goes, standing awkwardly in front of the mirror. It’s like the first few days of talking to Jongdae all over again, only worse, because his stomach is a swirling pit of guilt. “You’re not as slick as you think.” 

Yifan keeps his mouth shut. 

“Why are you being so awkward?” Jongdae complains. “What happened, Yifan? Are we not friends anymore?” 

It’s said jokingly, but Yifan’s chest still seizes up. “No! No.” He sits down, crossing his legs, hoping he seems less _horribly_ uncomfortable. “I just thought you would like to talk to Jongin more. Since you two are... better friends.” 

“You’re so dumb,” Jongdae says. “I like talking to both of you.” 

_Can’t I love two people at the same time?_

“Okay,” Yifan mumbles. What is he even supposed to do? 

Jongdae seems happy with that. “Now, tell me what you’ve been up to.” 

He’s so _confused_. 

::

The weekend before their 2-month anniversary, Yifan takes Jongin out to a proper Peking duck restaurant. 

Half the time is spent folding duck wraps for Jongin, half watching him eat. Jongin doesn’t seem to mind, squeezing his eyes shut as he chews, humming at how _good_ it is, beaming at Yifan as he makes another wrap. 

Jongin picks up slices of duck and clumsily feeds Yifan, smearing sauce over his cheek. He kisses it clean each time, which. Well. 

They return home, stuffed with duck and cucumber, and break out the fancy wine. Yifan doesn’t have fancy wine, he has sparkling fruit juice, but they pour it into Yifan’s only set of fancy wine glasses and it’s pretty much the same. 

They pour a glass out for Jongdae too, who makes a clinking noise when Jongin and Yifan tap their glasses together.

“Happy 2 months, you two,” Jongdae says. “Now if you’re gonna go celebrate by fucking like rabbits, please shut the door, ‘cuz I don’t wanna hear any of that.” 

“Jongdae!” Yifan yelps, scandalised. 

Jongin laughs and drags him off to the bedroom to _celebrate_. 

“You and... Yi...xing,” Jongin says when they tumble into bed, attaching himself to Yifan’s jawbone, “Did you fuck him?” 

Yifan shivers for reasons completely unrelated to Jongin mouthing at his neck. Okay, maybe a little related. 

“I...” He stalls. The memory of being pressed to Yixing’s narrow dorm bed by his deep, powerful strokes. The memory of his bed creaking as Yixing rode him, hard and fast. God, those hips did not fucking lie. He squirms a little. 

Jongin cocks his head. 

“He fucked me?” he croaks, like a question. Jongin quirks an eyebrow. “He fucked me,” he repeats, clearing his throat. 

Jongin smiles an evil, evil smile, kissing Yifan hard. He climbs off the bed, leaving Yifan on his back and breathless. Somehow he knows the exact drawer that Yifan keeps his lube and condoms, which _could’ve_ been a lucky guess but probably wasn’t. Jongin is smart, and so, so evil. 

He climbs back onto Yifan’s lap, stripping Yifan of his nice button-up shirt, tutting when Yifan tries to sit up to take it off himself. He does the same with Yifan’s pants, Yifan’s underwear, until Yifan is nude and Jongin is sitting above him with just the two top buttons of his shirt undone. 

“Up,” he says, hiking one of Yifan’s thighs up his shoulder. Yifan has to remind himself to relax when cold fingers covered in lube press inside. 

Jongin moves quickly, kissing Yifan as he adds another finger. God, his fingers are so _long_. He rubs gently over Yifan’s prostate, _aha_ -ing when Yifan bucks his hips up. He keeps up the assault for a few seconds that last like minutes. 

“Please,” Yifan whimpers, clutching Jongin’s shirt so hard the fabric tears. 

He wraps his other hand around Yifan’s cock and crooks all three fingers against his prostate. Yifan sees stars. He comes embarrassingly quickly, gripping Jongin’s wrist. 

(To be fair—it’s been four years since he was properly fingered. He’s not flexible in the slightest, and the few times he attempted after he and Yixing broke up _four years ago_ had left him unsatisfied and with a cramp in his arm.) 

He lays there, blissed out. Jongin wipes his hand on the sheet, which, _gross_ , and leans up to kiss Yifan sweetly. “Can I fuck you?” he says, all sweet and pretty, and Yifan groans. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Yifan breathes. 

Jongin is so pretty. The sunset pours in from the window, making him glow gold. His long hair falls over his face. In his eyes, there’s heat, adoration, love. 

He can’t lose him. 

Yifan shoves the guilt down. No. Not _now_. Not now. He half-sits up to kiss Jongin, whose eyes crinkle. “I love you,” he whispers as he pushes inside, punching the breath out of Yifan’s lungs. 

“Love you too,” Yifan moans. He laces their fingers together as Jongin begins to thrust. 

His eyes are sharp and focused as he fucks into Yifan, bringing his free hand down to stroke Yifan’s cock in tandem to his thrusts. He’s rid of his shirt, finally, and Yifan can admire the way his abs flex as he moves. God, he’s so fucking _strong_ , Yifan feels like a ragdoll. 

_Jongin moves like Yixing_ , the single sensible part of his brain comments. 

“A—Are you a dancer?” he blurts out, words punctuated with each of Jongin’s thrusts. 

“Huh. Yeah. How’d you know?” Jongin asks. 

He doesn’t slow, and Yifan feels like he’s drowning. “Ah—ah, um, Yixing was a dancer,” he says. “Is a dancer.” He blinks the overwhelmed tears from his eyes. “He dances in America now.” 

“Ahh.” Jongin doesn’t seem bothered by Yifan talking about his ex as he fucks him, but Yifan doesn’t think the sudden dirty roll of his hips, dragging his cock over Yifan’s prostate, is an accident. He sucks a possessive mark into Yifan’s thigh. 

“I’m, I’m, I’m going to come,” Yifan gasps. The dual stimulation on his prostate and cock have his good sense pooling away from his brain. 

“W-Wait,” Jongin grits out. He moves his hand to Yifan’s waist, thrusts stuttering before he buries himself deep inside Yifan. Yifan cannot _wait_ , and with a single stroke his vision is going white and he’s spilling over again. 

The exhaustion that follows is bone-deep and more satisfying than anything. 

But God, he is _not_ young anymore. 

His head is full of noise as Jongin pulls out and tosses the condom. He returns with a warm washcloth and begins wiping Yifan clean, tossing that onto the nightstand after he’s done. Yifan raises his arms and Jongin settles onto the bed beside him. 

“Hi,” Yifan says. He’s so fucking _fond_. 

“Hi you,” Jongin replies, pressing cruelly into one of the marks he left. Yifan bats his hand away, tucking his head into Jongin’s shoulder. 

It’s so nice. He’s genuinely happy for once. 

“Love you.” 

He falls asleep not long after that, tangled in Jongin’s arms. 

::

This is it, he thinks. This is all he wants. 

::

It was going so well. 

It’s their actual 2-month anniversary. Yifan picks up fried chicken after work, and makes a detour to a little jewelry shop to pick up a set of bracelets. Gold. A thin bangle and various thin chains with crystals dangling off the ends. 

He has the clasp engraved with their initials. A promise. 

Yifan drives home, giddy. 

There’s muffled shouting as he exits the elevator onto his floor, but it doesn’t damp his mood. Probably his neighbours, he thinks, smiling stupidly as his hand brushes past the jewelry box as he roots around his pockets for his house key. 

(It was all going so well.) 

When he opens the door, Jongin is standing in the entryway. 

Holding the notebook. 

And Yifan has never drowned before, never even been close really. But he thinks this might be how it feels. The blood in his veins turns into ice, and something grips his chest and squeezes, squeezes, squeezes. 

“I,” Yifan says. “I’m sorry.” 

“So you knew,” Jongin says, voice low and clipped. He’s so still. Yifan can’t see his face, and it scares him. “You knew how to get him out.” 

Yifan is quiet. 

It’s all the confirmation Jongin seems to need. He turns away, ripping a bag from the cupboard and shoving things into it. It’s all his things, little as they may be, but Jongin’s things that have, over the months since he came out of the mirror, accumulated around their apartment. His movements are jerky. 

Jongin picks up the glass bear. 

“What are you doing?” Yifan says. Panic seizes his body. “Jongin.” 

Jongin puts on a jacket, draws the hood up. It’s one of Yifan’s. Well-loved by Jongin, who seemed to find comfort in zipping it up completely, burying his nose in the fabric. He doesn’t zip it up. He picks up the mirror, tucking it under one arm. 

“Jongin,” Yifan says. “Jongin, please, I’m sorry.” 

With the mirror and canvas bag, Jongin walks to the entryway, where Yifan stands. “Move,” he says lowly. Yifan doesn’t move. “Yifan, move.” 

“You can’t leave,” Yifan says, increasingly panicked. “Don’t leave. Please don’t.” He reaches out for Jongin, who steps away and past Yifan. He makes a desperate grab for his boyfriend’s arm, but Jongin walks quickly, and is already several metres out of reach. “Jongin. Jongin!” 

He’s blabbering now, the hot burn of tears pressing on his eyes. “Please don’t leave me. I can’t lose you. I did it because I was afraid I would lose you!” 

Jongin stops. He doesn’t turn around. “Well that’s a shame, isn’t it?” 

::

He stands in the hallway for a long, long time. 

::

_im sorry_

_jongin please let me explain_

_im sorry_

_this is all my fault_

_please_

_please jongin_

_This number has been disabled. If you think this is a mistake, contact us at xx xxx xxx._

::

Yifan picks himself up after three days. Three days is all he really gets—three days of paid sick leave is all he has left for the year. In those three days, he alternates between staring out the window and texting Jongin’s deactivated number and sleeping, folded into that tiny loveseat. 

The days after pass in a blur. 

He shows up to the office on a Saturday. He skips past delivery udon in his regression and goes straight back to not eating at all. He showers, if standing beneath the spray until his alarm beeps for the third time counts. He sleeps, if anything, he sleeps too much. He never stops feeling exhausted. 

He goes through the motions. 

It’s a miserable, miserable, awful existence. 

He’s miserable and awful. 

::

What is he even supposed to do? 

Yifan throws himself into work. Harder, more, more. “Take a break, Yifan,” his manager says, putting a hand on Yifan’s shoulder. Yifan nods. There’s worry in her eyes. 

Yifan asks for more work not even an hour later. 

::

The days pass. The sun sets and the sun rises. Nothing changes. He doesn’t wake up from the shitty nightmare he has convinced himself this is. 

It’s a weekend. He’s sitting there, fading in and out of it, when the buzzer goes off. He’s not sure what time it is. There’s talking outside his door, and the buzzer goes off again. 

Again. 

Again. 

It starts to become background noise. 

Again. 

Then his door is kicked open. “What the _fuck_?” Lu Han says. 

“Yifan?” Minseok. 

“Ge,” Zitao says, kneeling down beside Yifan. He’s grown out his hair. It’s dyed pale brown and tied into a ponytail. 

“What are you doing here?” Yifan mumbles. “Go away.” 

“What the fuck,” Lu Han says again. 

“You haven’t been answering our texts,” Minseok says softly, touching Yifan’s hand. Tough luck—Yifan hasn’t touched his phone in a week. He’s not sure if it has battery. He’s not even sure where it is. 

Yifan sighs. “So you decided to break down my door?” The sharpness grates against his throat and he starts coughing. A glass of water is pressed into his hand. 

Lu Han ignores him in favour of looking around his apartment for... alcohol? Yifan’s un-unpacked boxes? His apartment is immaculate, and for once, he wishes it wasn’t, for he’d have something to do rather than sit there and rot. 

“We were worried,” Zitao says. Why is Zitao here? He’s supposed to be halfway across the country. “For good reason,” he continues under his voice. 

“You shouldn’t be,” he says, getting off the couch. His back seizes, of course, it feels like someone is pouring candle wax down his spine. Minseok’s lips press into a straight line. “Go back to Beijing, Taozi.” 

Lu Han grips his wrist. “What’s wrong, Yifan? This isn’t like you. You’re so off.” 

“I’m not off,” Yifan says tiredly. “I’m just tired. I’ve been working a lot.” 

At least that part is true. He’s weeks ahead. 

Lu Han pokes around his kitchen more. He seems to be surprised at the not-desolate state of Yifan’s cupboards and fridge, which is really depressingly comical. He helps himself to a yogurt pouch, sitting down on the arm of the sofa. 

“Where’s Jongin?” 

Yifan stiffens. “Not here, as you can see.” 

“How the hell did you manage to break up with him already?” Lu Han frowns, eyebrows raised. He purses his lips. “You’re not _that_ bad.” 

“Lu,” Minseok barks. “Enough.” 

It’s awful. It’s awful. It makes his chest cave in on itself, and even worse, he can’t say anything without having to explain so much. He doesn’t have the energy. 

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Yifan snaps. It’s times like these when he misses someone who would just let him stew in his own misery rather than splash it around like this. 

He doesn’t want to think about Jongin and Jongdae. He doesn’t want to explain it to Lu Han because Lu Han will ask him _why_ and he won’t be able to explain. 

It’s too fucking humiliating. 

“Did you break up?” Lu Han asks quietly. 

Yifan stays silent. He keeps rinsing the glass, numb. There’s rushing in his ears, and he doesn’t hear Zitao until he’s wrapping his arms around Yifan’s waist. 

He drops the glass. 

His eyes fill with tears. God. God, he misses Jongin. 

“I have to go back to Beijing,” Zitao says into his shoulders. His voice is small and vulnerable. “Please take care of yourself, ge.” 

What else is Yifan supposed to do? 

He turns around, pats Zitao’s head. “Okay,” he says. “I will.” 

::

They leave. Yifan picks up the glass. 

_God, fuck this_ , he thinks. _Fuck this. Fuck._

It’s spite running through his veins as he slams the glass down onto the drying rack. Spite as he jumps into the shower, puts it as hot as it will go, and scrubs himself until his skin is red. He makes dumplings, watches them sizzle, and eats them out of the pan. 

He goes back to fried noodle takeout, but that’s better than saltine crackers. He still sleeps too much, but he does it in his bed rather than the loveseat. 

One step at a time. 

::

It’s more difficult adjusting to not having a roommate than adjusting to having one, but Yifan manages. 

He burns the rest of the frozen onion crepes one dark 6AM and then it’s back to oatmeal. He finds out there’s a café one block away from his apartment, and he goes there every day, because the alternative is sitting in his dark apartment after work, eating takeout udon while he continues to do work. 

The barista’s name is Chanyeol and he smiles toothily at Yifan whenever he drags his ass in. 

“Can I expect you to be a new regular?” Chanyeol asks one evening, smiling as he passes Yifan his tea. He’s always smiling. Yifan feels bad for being grumpy, so he tries to smile back. 

“I guess,” Yifan shrugs. 

He doesn’t even like coffee. _You’re real fucking bitter for someone who takes his coffee like that_ , Yixing told him once, gesturing at his milk-with-a-dash-of-coffee. It’s been five years. He still takes it like that. 

But Chanyeol, Chanyeol is kind. He gives Yifan cookies from the display case, which he saves to eat for breakfast the next morning. It’s an excuse to lie in bed, wasting his oatmeal-making time away, to get up at the second beep of his alarm. 

Coffee makes him think of Jongin. 

He fiddles with the little plastic window in the cafe’s pastry bags while he works. Occasionally his eye drifts to Chanyeol. Occasionally Chanyeol will catch his eye and smile. 

It’s too much. Yifan leaves when Chanyeol’s back is turned, and he sits in his dark apartment until he falls asleep—in bed, not the loveseat. 

He’s trying. 

::

The emptiness hasn’t subsided after two months, which Yifan finds honestly treasonous of himself. He was only with Jongin for two months. It’s become pathetic at this point. 

The blades of the ceiling fan move in and out of the corner of his vision. 

He digs his fingers into his temples and opens another spreadsheet. 

::

Minseok and Lu Han make it a point to check in on him. Every week, Saturday, 1PM. They alternate. They think they’re so slick and sneaky. 

Yifan doesn’t mind. He’s lonely. 

Actually, scratch that. He doesn’t mind _Minseok_. Minseok drags him out places. The gym, usually. (Oh, the horror.) A nice new restaurant, where there’s a couple’s discount. “You used me!” Yifan yells afterward. “You gotta admit, the food was good,” Minseok replies, sipping his bubble tea. 

Lu Han just bugs him for an hour and cleans his fridge of yogurt. “Hey, Yifan,” he says, yogurt tube hanging out of his mouth. 

Yifan lifts his head. “Yeah?” 

“Remember that fucked up mirror? What happened to it?” 

Yifan lets his head fall back down. “Nothing. I got rid of it.” 

_Sure got rid of it, alright._

The buzzer goes off again. “You sure are Mr. Popular for someone who never goes out,” he hears Lu Han comment as he slides off the couch to answer the door. 

“Don’t project your shit habits on me now,” Yifan snarks. “And it’s probably one of those door-to-door sales guys.” 

It’s not one of those door-to-door sales guys. 

“Hello there.” 

“What the fuck.” 

It’s fucking Suho from the fucking magic shop. He’s wearing wire-framed glasses and a neutral checker-pattern suit and a silk shirt, smiling that smile of his. He doesn’t have the antlers anymore and his hair is black, but it’s definitely Suho. 

“It’s been a while, Yifan.” 

Yifan shuts the door. 

::

Eventually Lu Han finishes off his yogurt and ambles over to see Yifan hunched over on the floor, having a crisis. He opens the door. Suho is still there, still smiling placidly, still without antlers. 

As weird as the antlers had been, it’s weirder to see him without. 

“You have some weird-ass friends, Fanfan,” Lu Han says with a shrug, inviting Suho in and offering him a yogurt. 

“I don’t know him,” Yifan says. 

“I’m easily forgettable,” Suho returns. Lu Han seems to find this uproariously funny. “I do hope you remember Jongin and Jongdae though—”

Yifan deflates. 

“Jongin like his boyfriend Jongin?” Lu Han says, the lightness gone from his voice. “The boyfriend who fucked Yifan—ahaha, fucked Yifan—I mean, the boyfriend that fucked Yifan over and let him fuck his whole life up?” 

Suho raises his eyebrows. 

Yifan sighs. “Lu, it’s not like that.” 

A long-asleep storm brews inside his stomach. His chest feels so, so small, and he can’t draw breath into his lungs. Jongin. Jongdae. How happy he’d been. How miserable he’d been. 

Suho looks at him. There’s something in his eyes, but Yifan can’t tell what. “Jongin wants to see you,” he says softly. 

::

“ _You should talk to him,_ ” Minseok says over the phone. “ _Whatever happened between you two, talking will help. You’re already broken up. If all goes well, you’ll have him back. It can’t get worse, yeah?_ ” 

Yifan rubs his eyes. “It absolutely can get worse.” 

“ _How so? He said he wants to see you, right?_ ” 

“I don’t know. I can feel it.” 

“I still don’t think you should go,” Lu Han says, arms crossed. “But if you want to go, I’ll be your moral support. Or I can go down first and rough him up a bit. He’s only, what, 180cm?” 

Yifan laughs wetly. “Don’t beat him up. He didn’t do anything wrong.” 

“ _I’m sorry, I have to go, client’s here,_ ” Minseok says. “ _Yifan. Just go talk to him. You’ll feel better._ ” 

“Okay, Min.” 

There’s a long silence after they hang up. 

“I’m gonna go,” Yifan says. 

Lu Han sighs long-sufferingly. “Right behind you, man.”

::

“You chickening out _now_?” Lu Han says, raising an eyebrow. He sidesteps Yifan and pushes the door open. 

Lo and behold, sitting at Yifan’s table, is Jongin. It’s probably a coincidence, but. He’s wearing a white shirt patterned with palm trees and Yifan feels like he hasn’t seen him in years and years. 

(It’s been 3 fucking months.)

Jongin stands up. Quick steps. They don’t quite meet in the middle—Yifan takes one forward step and Jongin is _there_ , hugging him so hard Yifan wheezes. Jongin stares at Yifan’s face, touching his cheek, before stepping back. 

It’s a nice, tender moment. 

Before, of course, Lu Han ruins it—peering between the two and jumping back with a clap, “ _This_ is Jongin? He’s _cute_. Damn. I don’t think I wanna beat him up anymore.” 

Yifan punches Lu Han. 

“Nice to meet you, finally. I’m Lu Han, this bastard—” he jabs Yifan, and Yifan supposes he deserves it “—’s best friend.” 

“Hi, Lu Han.” Jongin flushes. God, Yifan’s heart aches. Minseok was wrong. This is already so, so, so much worse. He shouldn’t’ve come— 

Jongin wraps his hand around his wrist before he can bolt. “We need to talk, yeah?” 

::

There’s another person sitting at the table when they return. He’s not paying much attention to anything but his phone, tapping his foot as he scrolls, eyebrows raising and scrunching at the things he sees on the screen. He’s unfamiliar, but Jongin doesn’t seem to be surprised, sliding into the booth beside him and... 

Kisses him. 

Yifan is in no place to be jealous, so he swallows it down. Kind of. He kind of wants to bolt out of the café. He kind of wants to die. 

“Nini,” the stranger says, eyebrows forming a caret as he smiles. That voice... He looks up, finally, jumping up when he sees Yifan. “Yifan!” 

Yifan blinks. “Jongdae?” 

Of course it’s Jongdae. 

He’s... _shorter_ than Yifan expected—actually, he’s not sure what he expected. He’d never given much thought as to what Jongdae looked like. But now that he’s in front of Yifan, he’s... exactly as he’d expected. 

He’s classy. A sharp jaw and high cheekbones. Curly black hair. A black turtleneck that clings to his torso and arms. Skinny pants, ankle boots, a gold bracelet on his slender wrist. Little curls at the corners of his mouth that make him look permanently smug. 

He’s so pretty. 

“The one and only,” Jongdae grins, tugging the frozen Yifan into a hug. As if they’re friends. “How’ve you been? I’ve missed you.” He glances at Jongin, whose face is blank. “Both of us missed you.” 

Are they friends? 

“I betrayed you,” Yifan whispers. 

Jongdae raises one perfect eyebrow and sits back down, crossing one leg over the other. He has several rings on his fingers. “That’s awfully dramatic of you,” he says. 

“Okay, I’m gonna blast,” Lu Han cuts in, sliding a large paper cup over to Yifan. It’s green tea, exactly how he likes it. Yifan stares at him with betrayed eyes. What happened to being his moral support? Lu Han whistles, adamantly _not_ looking at Yifan, as he leaves him to the wolves. 

He has to stop referring to his exes as wolves and demons and such. 

There’s a long silence after Lu Han makes his hasty exit. 

“I’m sorry,” he starts, which makes Jongin sigh. 

“Why did you do it?” 

_Because I’m fucking stupid, that’s why._ He fiddles with the tag hanging out of his tea. “You guys were so close.” He winces. It’s so stupid. He’s had a lot of time to think about how stupid it is. So his voice is tiny when he says, “I thought you would just leave when I managed to get Jongdae out.” 

“You thought we were using you...?” 

“No!” Yifan exclaims, staring at the lid of his cup. “No, it’s not like that. It’s like... why _would_ you even stay? You had a perfect boyfriend and were perfectly in love and I’m just... like that.” 

Jongin’s face crumples. “I was _dating_ you.” 

“You were helping us before you and Jongin started dating,” Jongdae says softly, touching Yifan’s hand. 

“I know!” he spits, frustrated at himself. “I know. It was fucking stupid of me. I just wanted you to stay. Both of you.” 

_But I lost the both of you anyway._

“I just. What was I supposed to think? Jongdae is smart and funny and attractive and you’ve been friends forever. I’m the dude who accidentally picked up the mirror that you were trapped inside.” He clenches his fists. “It’s obvious who you would pick. From the start.” 

There’s another long, tense silence. Maybe he shouldn’t’ve been so accusatory. Or self-deprecate-y. That always makes things awkward. 

“You think I’m hot?” Jongdae says. 

“Dae,” Jongin hisses. “This is not the fucking _time_.” 

Jongdae whines. “Is it not? You forgave him before we even found Junmyeon and got me out of that wretched place. I don’t know why you’re tormenting him like this.” He pauses, takes a sip of his coffee. “Unless... Jonginnie is into blue-balling?” 

Jongin sighs into his palms. 

“So,” Jongdae continues, stretching out his legs. He taps his foot against Yifan’s and smirks. “Are we going to keep doing this ‘make Yifan beg for forgiveness in a coffee shop’ or can we advance to making Yifan beg in bed?” 

“What?” Yifan croaks. He’s still processing the blue balls bit. Him? Beg? Bed??? 

And he’d _just_ called Jongdae classy. 

Jongin sighs again and seems to mentally peace out, leaving Yifan with a Jongdae that leans over the table, eyes gleaming. “Like, make-up sex, you know?” 

“Make-up sex?” Yifan echoes. His head is swimming. What the fuck. “Why—why do you guys need to make up? Why are you telling _me_?” 

Jongin and Jongdae turn to each other. 

“What?” Yifan asks weakly. “What are you doing?” he says, as Jongin and Jongdae each take one of his hands. “This feels very mob-y.” 

“Yifan,” Jongdae and Jongin say simultaneously. “Will you be our boyfriend?” 

  
“ _What_.”

::

One on each side, they bully Yifan to their apartment. It’s not much larger than Yifan’s apartment, but it’s homely, cozy, comfy, whatever word he chooses to use any given day. 

“You can admire the interior design later,” Jongdae says, patting Yifan’s cheek. He’s already tugging at Yifan’s shirt and they’re standing in the _entryway_. 

“Let’s show him the bed,” Jongin smirks, coming up behind Yifan and putting cold hands on his waist. Yifan whines, loud, letting Jongin and Jongdae strong-arm him down a hallway. They have nice wall art too, good God. 

The bed is great. Especially when Jongdae presses him into it, kissing him filthily, as Jongin rids him of his jeans and boxers. He’s tugged between two people who both want his full attention, competing in marking Yifan’s chest and thighs up. 

He squirms between them and immediately gets pushed down. Jongdae tsks, letting go only to pull off his shirt. Ugh, his biceps. Yifan feels so utterly inadequate for a moment, before Jongdae pulls him into a kiss. And another. And another. 

Jongin wraps his hand around Yifan’s cock and gives a cruel stroke, which has Yifan yelping into Jongdae’s mouth. 

“Come on,” Jongin says, which seems to mean something to Jongdae, because he stops pouting and reaches underneath the bed. Yifan gets up on his elbows to see, but Jongin sweeps over to claim his mouth. 

Jongin kisses sweetly. Jongdae takes, takes, takes. 

It’s exhilarating. 

“Flip him over,” Jongdae says. He has a bottle of lube and a fistful of condoms. 

“Are you sure you need that many?” Yifan laughs nervously, letting himself go limp so they can flip him over easy. Jongin and Jongdae switch places, and he watches them warily. 

“We have more,” Jongin says sweetly, tilting Yifan’s chin up so he can kiss him. 

As he does, Jongdae tells him _up_ , and slots a pillow beneath Yifan’s hips. He parts Yifan’s thighs, petting across his hole with cold, slick fingers. 

Jongdae’s fingers are thin and long. He sinks a finger into Yifan just as Jongin licks into his mouth; they’re painfully in sync with everything they do. “You open up so well,” Jongdae marvels, and Yifan wants to bury his face in a pillow. 

“Don’t—don’t say that,” he gasps, feeling his face go hot. “I—” 

He can _hear_ Jongdae’s grin as he finds Yifan’s prostate, ripping a groan from his chest. His thighs tremble in earnest now. It’s terrible. He’s going to die. They’re going to be the cause of his death. 

Jongin kisses his cheek, which is oddly out of place considering Jongdae is working up to a proper rhythm for the three fingers currently pumping in and out of his ass. He slides beneath Yifan, fisting his cock, sucking a hickey into the side of his neck. Yifan lets his forehead drop onto Jongin’s shoulder, groaning. 

“He’s gonna come,” Jongin says, letting go of Yifan’s cock with a squeeze. Jongdae withdraws his hand, wiping it on the sheet. He whines, loudly, grinding his hips into the pillow. 

“Babe,” Jongdae laughs, rolling a condom on. “Be patient.” 

The way he fucks into Yifan is very impatient. Jongin holds him as he shivers through the first few thrusts, before getting up onto his knees and taking his cock out. He peers up at Jongin through wet eyelashes, opening his mouth. 

Jongin is not small. That, and the fact that Yifan hasn’t sucked dick in several years, means he chokes. He brings one hand up to hold Jongin in place, the other rubbing circles on Jongin’s thigh. 

Jongdae continues his fucking but Yifan is more focused on Jongin, the way Jongin’s cheeks go ruddy as Yifan swallows around his cock, the way Jongin bites his lip to keep his noises in. His single-minded attention on Jongin seems to make Jongdae jealous, and he grips Yifan’s hips with a grip that will certainly leave bruises, grinding filthily across his prostate. “C’mon, big boy,” Jongdae says, “come for us.” 

That’s all Yifan needs. He comes, between his two(!!) boyfriends(!!), letting Jongin’s cock fall out of his mouth as he cries into Jongin’s hip. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he shouts, feeling his thighs become jelly. 

Jongdae groans and comes too, fingers digging bruises into Yifan’s hips. He opens his eyes to Jongin furiously jerking off, eyes roving over Yifan and Jongdae’s bodies. He whines, high-pitched, as he orgasms over his fist, and again when Yifan leans over to lick the cum off his fingers. 

They lie there for a while, just breathing. 

Finally, he thinks. I’m finally happy. 

“Forever this time,” Jongdae says. 

::

They take turns showering—as much as he would like to feel his boyfriends up in the shower, the cubicle is too damn small. He comes out to Jongin flipping a perfect pancake, animated-movie style. 

“I love you,” Yifan says, eyeing the hash browns. 

“Go ahead,” Jongin laughs. 

Jongdae exits the shower still dripping, kissing Yifan and then Jongin and then skipping over to the cupboard. He roots around for a moment before he pulls out a little whiteboard and marker. 

“Not this again,” Jongin sighs. The whiteboard is separated into three sections, and their names are written at the tops. He puts a tally under Yifan’s name, and magnets the board to the fridge. “No, no, _no_. We are _not_ putting the _Fucking Chart_ on the _fridge_ ,” Jongin says, exasperated. 

When Jongin goes to shower, the _Fucking Chart_ mysteriously ends up back on the fridge. 

“You’re terrible,” Jongin sighs, leaving the chart, “Both of you.” At Yifan’s _why me!?_ he says, “For enabling him.” 

“You love us,” Jongdae sings, skipping back to the bedroom. “Now, what about make-up sex: round two?” 

::

It’s surprisingly easy to love two people. 

Yifan breaks the lease on his shitty box apartment and moves in with Jongin and Jongdae. He procrastinates on packing up, and when Jongin pops by a day before _MOVING DAY!_ (marked out, in pink pen, on the calendar) to find Yifan sitting amongst all his unshelved-but-not-yet-packed stuff, he laughs. 

“Just throw it all out. Or sell it, if you must. We already have all this stuff.” He tucks the coffee machine under his arm, though. 

When Jongin works dumb shifts at the coffee shop, Jongdae has Yifan to bug. When Yifan begins working on weekends, they tag-team him out of it, coercing him into their huge bed where they tag-team him there. 

He thinks back to his old anxieties, six months down the line, a year down the line, and laughs at how stupid he used to be. 

Three’s a crowd, they say, but Yifan finds he quite likes crowds. 

::

There’s a door in the apartment that connects to Suho’s, who he finds out, stupidly late, is their neighbour. He pops through the door to find Suho lounging in the sun, draped in a flimsy white dress, eating grapes out of a gilded bowl. He raises an eyebrow. 

“Mortals yearn to feel the way gods feel,” is all Suho says. He offers Yifan a grape. He smiles, and there’s endless wisdom in his crinkled eyes. “What do you need, Yifan?” 

“I made too much food,” Yifan says, putting down the glass container of black bean noodles. 

“Thank you,” Suho says. 

He’s about to leave when he sees a very familiar mirror. It has the crack Lu Han put in it. He’d thought they’d broken it to get Jongdae out, but it’s still very much intact. 

He’s just thinking to ask Suho if he can have it when—“You can,” Suho says. 

“What?” 

“Take it. It’s yours, after all.” Suho smiles mysteriously. “Keep it, so you have a prop when you tell your grandkids about how you got together.” 

Yifan flushes, but takes it. 

It’s important, after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank u so much for reading! ajlasksshjdk i had a lot of fun writing this; to the prompter; i sort of went off track but i hope its enjoyable all the same! thank u to the mods for putting up with me, and E for supporting me throughout ^^ 
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/02sheep)


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